Missouri Senate Primary Just a Warm-Up for Blunt

Roy Blunt has been left with a wide-open field and plenty of running room in the Missouri Republican Senate Primary. The mantle of four-term Missouri Senator Christopher "Kit" Bond was clearly passed to Blunt at the Party's Lincoln Days events in February.

Although nine other candidates vie for the Republican slot in the general election, the August 3 primary lacks any serious opposition for Blunt. Fringe platforms have largely relegated these candidates to "also runs." The only primary candidate opposing Blunt that has political experience, Chuck Purgason, seeks a "return to constitutional authority" including the abolition of the federal income tax. Others maintain similarly self-defeating positions, such as a call to Reagan Republicans to bring God back into government, asking "patriots" to get behind plans to dissolve the EPA and do away with structured school curriculum leaving every teacher to decide what to teach, and an Abe Lincoln center right Republican, pro-life and NRA economic centrist endorsed by non-Missouri actor Michael J. Fox.

But these diverse primary candidates should be a source of concern for Blunt. Not because they have any real chance of taking the Republican nomination from him, but because they represent grass-roots dissatisfaction with politics as usual. At least two of the Republican primary candidates align with the Tea Party movement. That dissatisfaction smells reminiscent of the smaller government tide that swept Ronald Reagan into the White House, the Perot candidacy that swept George H.W. Bush out of that office in 1992 and the hope for change that got Barack Obama elected President.

The key to Missouri state-wide elections is to not be too closely aligned with either Kansas City to the west or the St. Louis metropolitan area on the east side of the State, and to garner support from the largely conservative and religious out-state voters. Blunt, a native of Southwest Missouri, knows how to walk that constituent tightrope, having done it twice in the 1980s to become Secretary of State. But the spark put under those usually lounging on the political sidelines, evidenced by the Tea Party movement and the 100% attendance increase at February's Lincoln Days, is the new variable in the equation.

That new activism does not bode well for a political veteran and dynasty-head like Blunt. As a seven-term member of Congress, he cannot avoid being associated with the policies of George W. Bush and the economic crisis. The unpopularity of his son, Matt Blunt, as a one-term state governor during the last four Bush years may have also politically tarnished the surname. The broad but somewhat disorganized activism threatens to fragment Blunt's support in the various directions of better-organized write-in and third party candidates, his Democratic opponent and voter apathy in an off-year election.

Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_2010#Kit_Bond_of_Missouri
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2989644/republican_candidates_for_missouris_pg3.html?cat=8